new publication
excerpts of the novel published by Mondadori
Aleksei Nikitin’s short novel THE ORDERLY FROM INSTITUTSKA STREET is the story of two friends from Kyiv, the poet Yurka Nezgoda and the artist Nikolai Umanets. In the 1990’s Nezgoda and Umanets were promi- nent members of the bohemian Kyiv art scene. In the end the heroes meet again on Kyiv’s Maidan Square. Umanets is with the protesters, while Nezgoda tries to stay neutral. But it is Nezgoda who gets pulled into the swirl of events in the novel. He dies as an orderly, trying to move the wounded to safety under fire. Umanets watches his friend die on live television.
In 2019, five years after Maidan, the novel was the only Russian-language novel to be included in the list of “Best texts about Maidan.”
“Maidan, as a lived experience, when the feeling of history being created, is perceived deeply and directly. This made The Orderly a deeper and wiser text than a mere projection of a series of lost generation.“
LITCENTR